Organ Road Trip: R3, Sundays 11pm

[Nick Armstrong]

Looking forward to this three-part series, starting this evening:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m000ykch

In this series, organist David Briggs invites us to visit three of his favourite pipe organs, picked from the hundreds of unique instruments he’s encountered during his career as an international recitalist. He shares his experiences of what these organs feel like to play and the special qualities that gives each their own, very individual character, including the extraordinary spaces they inhabit. Alongside, he picks a selection of great recordings that lets us hear these organs at their very best.

This first episode focuses on an instrument that Mozart, Handel and Mendelssohn all went out of their way to visit and play. An 18th century masterpiece built by Christian Müller in the church of Saint Bavo in the Netherlands city of Haarlem.

Bach: Prelude in B flat, BWV 560
Piet Kee, organ

Bach: Prelude and Fugue in D major, BWV 532
Jacques van Oortmerssen, organ

Mendelssohn: Organ Sonata No.3 in A major, Op 64 No 3
Jos van der Kooy, organ

Vierne: Feux follets, Op 53 No 4
Stephen Tharp, organ

Reger: Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, Op 67 No 3
Piet Kee, organ

Jean Guillou: Improvisation
Jean Guillou, organ

[Simon Biazeck]

The Müller in the Grote Kerk, Haarlem is superb, and Piet Kee's Reger & Hindemith CD on Chandos is one of my Desert Island discs. The notes also include registrations! As an organ tragic, this is heaven!

SBz

[Keraulophone]

Wonderful.

Followed by the Cavaillé-Coll at Saint-Sulpice, Paris next Sunday, and a week later the Aeolian-Skinner at St John the Divine, NYC, where David Briggs is Artist-in-Residence.

He is currently in Truro, giving a recital on the Father Willis on Tuesday, as well as recording his transcription of VW’s 5th Symphony for the Vaughan Williams Society.

[oddoneout]

Serendipity, thanks for highlighting it Nick, it provided the perfect wind-down to a rather delayed bedtime. Despite knowing nothing about the instrument I do like listening to organ music (old and new) and in the past have been happy to take advantage of free lunchtime recitals in the city and locally. Not sure I agreed about the Reger and the tremolo( but full appreciation was hampered by being unable to have the volume up due to the late hour), and thought the Guillou improvisation marvellous - the old instrument being used in a modern way really caught my attention with the different sounds. What will probably stick longest in my mind though is the item about the marking up of a score to enable a registrand to manipulate the stops - and wondering about the limits to spontaneity that might impose? Or would it make for ingenuity in using what was available without modification? As I say I know nothing about organ workings.

[Simon Biazeck]

Re. the tremulant, its history in organ building, and imitation of the singing voice:

https://www.voxhumanajournal.com/abadie2019.html

SBz.

[DracoM]

At last - an organist explaining on air what he was doing and how he was playing it + details of organ!!
Hurray!

[Keraulophone]

I wonder how the registrants know which stops to pull and push during an improvisation such as Jean Guillou played. Perhaps he has a chat with them beforehand to outline his intentions, but even then. It would be extremely difficult for the organist himself to reach or draw the stops while in full flow.

[Simon Biazeck]

I wonder how the registrants know which stops to pull and push during an improvisation such as Jean Guillou played. Perhaps he has a chat with them beforehand to outline his intentions, but even then. It would be extremely difficult for the organist himself to reach or draw the stops while in full flow.

On the Cavaillé-Coll at St. Sulpice (in this series), the registrant is on stand-by, following commands at c. 3:32. Not Guillou-style, but you get the picture. 'Twas ever thus, I suspect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbB5n1GyWAU

The number (capacity!) of observers is astonishing, and they chat!

SBz.

[Simon Biazeck]

BTW, I've seen Guillou improvising on the Nave console at St. Eustache and he had a couple of registrants to hand. It was the Saturday Vigil Mass and he improvised on the Propers in an uncompromising atonal style. The congregants didn't bat an eyelid. They were used to it. The sortie was his full-fat (Crême Fraiche!) arrangement of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture!

SBz.

[Keraulophone]

BTW, I've seen Guillou improvising on the Nave console at St. Eustache and he had a couple of registrants to hand. It was the Saturday Vigil Mass and he improvised on the Propers in an uncompromising atonal style. The congregants didn't bat an eyelid. They were used to it. The sortie was his full-fat (Crême Fraiche!) arrangement of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture!

I guess his registrants were accustomed to his demands. JG had an incredible musical mind and a superlative technique.
I heard him for the first time when in my early teens, on the old Sainte-Eustache organ. The parents of my Parisian exchange-friend had taken me in there just before the closing voluntary - Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor. The acoustics helped the fugue to a thunderous conclusion.

[Simon Biazeck]

I guess his registrants were accustomed to his demands. JG had an incredible musical mind and a superlative technique.
I heard him for the first time when in my early teens, on the old Sainte-Eustache organ. The parents of my Parisian exchange-friend had taken me in there just before the closing voluntary - Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor. The acoustics helped the fugue to a thunderous conclusion.

Yes, and possibly former students, I suppose, but certainly well-accustomed to his ways, as you say.